Pleasure Planets are such a funny concept to me. Travelling light years to get drunk and watch a woman shake her ass on stage feels incredibly indulgent and not very economical, but then again maybe that's the whole point.
 
I am curious about their origin!

You see the idea show up a fair amount starting in the late '50s and it seems to be tied to folks that experienced World War II; especially sailors that spent long months onboard ships punctuated by shore leave in exotic ports... and then became SF writers and translated that concept into space (Sanctuary from Starship Troopers, the Shore Leave planet on Star Trek and so on).

But there's also an earlier version, like Kalgan in Foundation where the idea is more to signify that a future society has become so advanced (and/or corrupt/stolid) that it could have entire planets that just produce arts and entertainment. So there it feels more like they're projecting the idea of Hollywood in the roaring twenties into the future.
 
Probably what you said, but also that kind of tourism becoming more of a fact of life during the latter half of the 20th century. If real life people love going to Vegas or Ibiza space people love going to space Vegas or space Ibiza, right? It's just one of those sci-fi things that scale very weirdly when you make it a planet and not a island or city or whatever.

It gets even funnier in Privateer where Gemini comes across as a corrupt shithole completely overrun with space pirates, murderous religious fanatics and genocidal space cats and still somehow has several thriving worlds entirely dedicated to tourism.
 
I suppose there are enough Confed officers and civilians to support these planets, let alone all these space pirates. The pirate bases hardly seem like places to relax with all that fighting going on around them. Moreover, such places are the great for money laundering through fake copyright/artist payments and fake IP settlements.
 
kingmakeress said:
I suppose there are enough Confed officers and civilians to support these planets, let alone all these space pirates. The pirate bases hardly seem like places to relax with all that fighting going on around them. Moreover, such places are the great for money laundering through fake copyright/artist payments and fake IP settlements.
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Yeah, Pirate protection/patronage makes huge sense. Also makes sense with the merchandise pirates have on offer in Privateer.

Cybot078 said:
I aways as thought of pleasure planets as agricultural planets with more fun stuff to do. Like hunting, golf courses, camping , site seeing, and the Vegas stuff too. Also most planets might not like foreign visitors with diseases and other bio contaminants, with out a long quarantine time at orbital station first.
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Yeah, iirc this is pretty much what the equivalent in 40k is. A pretty nice world that isn't a super urbanized and industrialized hellhole where rich people can go to do rich people nonsense. There's also the legality angle, like how in Starfield (of all things) the one nightclub in the cyberpunk theme park is the only place you can go buy and eat drugs legally.
 
Dyret said:
Yeah, Pirate protection/patronage makes huge sense. Also makes sense with the merchandise pirates have on offer in Privateer.
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Well someone has to read all these articles in PlayThing (TM), right? Also Governor Menesch has to close these lucrative Talon deals somewhere and his office was probably bugged by InSys ..
 
That Talon story is easily my favourite piece of Wing Commander lore. Pretty sure they only did it so they could get away with using a palette swap for like half the game's factions, but it's so incredibly believable at the same time.
 
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